A Case of the Blues

We hope to see many of you at Yakima's - "A Case of the Blues and All that Jazz." The weather looks like it will be great. This is always a fun event with wonderful food, music and of course wine! For more information check out their website: http://www.yakimagreenway.org/blues

Getting Ready to Bottle

Neil and Anke spent the day blending and getting the wine ready for bottling. We are really excited about the 2008 reds! They worked on the Artemisia today.
They took the quantity of each varietal from the barrels that was needed for a particular blend and pumped that from the barrel into the tank. We have some of the red blends all ready and in the tanks. Next we will filter it all before bottling.



While they were getting ready with bottling Tom was taking care of some of the chores around the farm. The pictures show a little of how we stack the hay.





Some happy horses and our view of Mt. Rainier tonight!

Beautiful Evening

Beautiful evening last night with the crescent moon setting over Mt. Adams and Venus just above it.

August 7

This weekend we will have another "Grown to Greatness" weekend. These are educational weekends put on by some of the wineries within the Wine Yakima Valley Association. We will be taking a closer look at Riesling wines. Tom and Neil will be giving vineyard tours, and we will do a vertical tasting looking at some of the characteristics of Riesling wine. Guests will be able to sample our dry 2006, our medium sweet 2008 and they will get a sneak peek at our dry 2009.

In addition our wine club members will have the option of participating in our first summer "pick up and picnic." They will be able to pick up their 3rd shipment of the year along with a picnic in the orchard. Anke, our winemaker, will be at the winery to discuss the wines that are going out with this quarter's shipment. The picnic is being catered by VegHead ED Cafe.

Project Hope

Gabrielle - one of the partners - is once again working with Project Hope- a medical service organization. This time she is in Indonesia on the USNS ship Mercy. Here is a link to their blog:

http://projecthopeinthefield.blogspot.com

If you click all the way back to the posting for July 8, you can follow what they have been doing. This is a great organization that brings medical support all over the world. We are really proud of Gabrielle and the work she has done with this.

Summer is flying by!!!

Wheww -this has been a busy past couple of months!!! I have been remiss in adding on. - So first off a little catching up on what has been going on around the farm and winery. The eggs from the picture on the last post hatched and have flown.



The cherries have all been harvested. The triticale - one of the feed crops we raise, was also harvested and we planted corn in after that. Alfalfa has been cut for hay twice, and the wine grapes are doing well. We will try to get more pictures up of the grapes as they progress.